


Shoplifters of the World Unite

by Gilded_Pleasure



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Drug Use, F/F, Gratuitous Pizza Murder, Honda Civics and Hotplates, LesboDrama and Chaos, Mild Sexual Content, Realistic grief, True 90s Aesthetic, be gay do crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 14:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20817053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilded_Pleasure/pseuds/Gilded_Pleasure
Summary: No one can tell Vidalia what to do anymore, so she just does whatever she wants. Not much point to it, though. It's been a very long time since she's wanted anything.Amethyst always goes with the flow...even when it's headed right down the drain.Turns out that if you spend enough time dumpster diving, you might eventually surface with something worth holding on to.





	Shoplifters of the World Unite

_Learn to love me, assemble the ways_

_Now, today, tomorrow and always_

_My only weakness is a list of crime_

_My only weakness is... well, nevermind... nevermind._

-The Smiths, Shoplifters of the World Unite

///

Amethyst and Vidalia shrieked gleefully as the guard’s grasping hand nearly managed to close around Amethyst’s shirtsleeve.

It sparkled a bit as she concentrated, shrinking the not-fabric closer to her body and out of his reach. They crashed and dodged their way out of the tacky department store and into the mall proper, their stolen rhinestone-and-leather purses bulging with shoplifted makeup, cheap costume jewelry, and expensive perfume.

“You’ll never catch us, PIGGIE!!” Amethyst hollered, grabbing Vidalia’s hand again as they clattered out across the high-gloss white floor and made a wide, scrambling turn out towards the escalator in front of the food court.

The red-faced security guard panted and slowed, leaned over with his hands on his knees and bellowed, “I’m not even a _police officer_!”

He decided he didn’t get paid enough to break his neck chasing two obviously unhinged young women down the “up” escalator. He made his way to the balustrade around the edge of the second level of the mall just in time to watch them bash their way out through an emergency exit, and groaned as the alarm’s piercing squeal cut through the general noise of the mall and drowned out the two hoydens’ triumphant laughter.

///

Vidalia squinted her generously mascara’d lashes against the smoke streaming up from the cigarette held carefully between her lips, right eye watering after a bit of ash blew into it. She wiped it with a practiced and delicate motion, thumbnail scraping underneath her lower lashes, then took a drag before plucking out the cig between two fingers.

Her hot-pink manicured fingers gripped the leather-encased steering wheel as she exhaled.

“How’s the haul?” Her raspy voice was made even rougher with toxic smoke.

Amethyst tore open one of the four purses they’d lifted from the mall and rummaged through its fashionable and capacious interior. It was the biggest one, all white leather and studded with silver, nearly the size of a small duffelbag. The front flap had long, white leather fringe.

“We got some lipstick, this ugly thing, some more jewelry… and… what is THIS?” she shrieked, holding up a shiny, brightly colored rectangle and waving it in front of Vidalia’s face.

Vidalia tried to duck under it to keep her eyes on the road, glanced up and then guffawed, “Did you shoplift a fucking Lisa Frank Trapper-Keeper? Are you gonna go to Sweet Valley High without me?” before dissolving into laughter almost loud enough to compete with the guitar solo blaring out of her car’s souped-up speaker system.

Vidalia had put a fair amount of time and energy (and money) into her little black Honda Civic, and the sound system was top of the line. Working on her car was one of the few things she still enjoyed, and she and Amethyst tore up and down the Delmarva coast in it a few times a week.

Being in the car never bothered her. Living in motion was always better than standing still, gathering dust in that empty house. But even home was more tolerable when Amethyst was around. A lot of things were better since she started hanging out with Amethyst, along with that bum Greg at first, then just the two of them when he started disappearing for days on end with his tall pink girlfriend. Amethyst’s roommate or whatever.

It was just as well. For a long-haired (and, she had to admit, good-looking) rock musician who blew into town and came off pretty cool, it turned out Greg was easily scandalized by anything more than a little vulgar, and worried _way_ too much about stuff like “falling off bridges” and “getting arrested”.

Amethyst wasn’t afraid of heights, or deer, or leaving the house without makeup, or standing up on a roller coaster. As far as Vidalia could tell, she wasn’t afraid of anything. Amethyst seemed to understand that if you don’t take your chance to do something now, get what you want as soon as you see it, it might not _be_ there tomorrow. Or even in an hour.

You might never see it again.

Vidalia sighed and changed lanes as she changed moods, and got back on the interstate that would lead them back to Beach City.

Amethyst pulled a box out of the second bag and opened it, and discovered it held a chunky glass bottle of perfume which she promptly sprayed liberally into the interior of the car.

“Ugh, it stinks,” she complained, then casually tossed the bottle out the window and watched it smash on the road behind them.

“Yeah,” Vidalia droned flatly, her laughter already forgotten. “I can’t believe they wanted 200 bucks for that.” She let out a humorless huff. “They’re really robbing people.”

///

The sun was setting by the time Amethyst followed Vidalia into the dark, cluttered house. She sighed contentedly at the smell of unwashed dishes and dirty laundry that pervaded its interior. It reminded her a lot of her room in the temple. Although she supposed this place smelled a little green compared to the more _seasoned_ bouquet of garbage that had been ripening for literal centuries. Still, she felt at home.

The hall was still mostly lined with photographs of Vidalia at various ages, along with two older humans that Amethyst had never met. That she would never meet, if what Vidalia said once in a while when she’d partaken heavily of the contents of her bottom dresser drawer was true. Her parents, who’d gone for a drive one day a few years ago that they’d never come back from. They had both had insurance policies. Although Vidalia didn’t have to want for anything, she could never have the one thing she did want.

Amethyst usually just stayed quiet when Vidalia got like that. Still, her tearless, droning confessions still tugged at feelings Amethyst liked to keep pushed down, like a fishhook pulling up a boot filled with all sorts of nastiness.

Usually Amethyst offered up distractions; suggested they go throw things in the ocean, or take a walk, or even go to Funland if it was early enough. Vidalia was always up for whatever, and she didn’t like being at home.

Amethyst couldn’t really see why. There was plenty to do here, after all. Mainly a lot of nothing, but also dress-up, rolling around in the three giant beds, making forts out of couch cushion, flushing trash down the toilet until it broke, watching old shows… or other stuff too sometimes. Amethyst was always up for whatever as well.

The shoes Vidalia kicked off as she stomped toward the stairs landed on a pile of shoeboxes that lay unopened, sedimentary layers of brand new expensive clothes with the tags still on them gathering dust piled on top.

Amethyst followed her up the stairs lined with crooked, dusty family photos and brought their stolen goods with them. The heavy bags bashed against her legs as she hauled them up. Vidalia swanned into the bedroom with a little twirl. She left her blank face behind and gave Amethyst a saucy grin, leaving the bedroom door open behind her.

Amethyst left it that way; it’s not like there was anyone to have privacy from, no one to lecture them about their criminal ways. Amethyst had a feeling this hadn’t always been Vidalia’s bedroom, since it looked like someone had moved most of the furniture from the others into this one at some point. The room was huge and had its own attached bathroom, but it was positively stuffed with bureaus, wardrobes, nightstands, and a lovely white vanity with a seat in front of it. That was what they made a beeline to. They both leaned forward greedily as Amethyst emptied the contents of the purses onto the top of the white-painted vanity with a messy clatter, smaller items sliding right off the pile and onto the floor.

“Awww, dude. There’s like _six bottles_ of that smelly stuff here,” Amethyst muttered.

“Maybe we can fence it,” Vidalia said without much conviction, “but since there’s no way I’m putting that on my body, I guess I’m gonna have to take a shower after all.”

She shrugged off the leather jacket with the mural she’d hand-painted on the back, let it hit the floor, and absently sniffed an armpit before nodding and heading towards the bathroom door. Amethyst continued to unbox the bottles of perfume just to make sure they were all the same, threw some of it over onto the bed, and then started in on the makeup and soaps.

“Oh hey,” Amethyst called. Her gem glowed, and she stretched her arm around the corner and into the bathroom. “This says “shower” on it, you need it?”

She held out a sizable plastic bottle with some kind of amber-colored liquid inside.

“Ooooh, New-trrro-_gee_-nahhhh” Vidalia purred absently, and grabbed it. Amethyst giggled and retrieved her arm as she listened to the water start.

Amethyst started to line up some of the makeup and costume jewelry on the vanity’s countertop, then grabbed a slippery shirt off the pile just as it started to slide off the edge. She pulled it on over her head, the fringe tickling her nose. Amethyst hadn’t seen this much fringe in a few hundred years. Humans and their fashions. She was kind of into it.

She peered into the vanity mirror, her long pale hair pulled back into a high ponytail with a “scrunchie” she and Vidalia had pilfered from another outlet mall further down towards the state border.

Her gem glowed again; her face morphed until it was a purple copy of Vidalia’s. She smirked, then scowled, trying on the habitual expressions she was used to seeing there. Then she grinned, crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, laughing, and shifted back to her own face.

_Is this even really my face? Is this the face I was supposed to have?_

Amethyst squashed those thoughts back down and leaned over to click on the lamp as the light from the window finally failed, the soft white cotton fringe of the shirt tickling her arm. She pulled the shirt down a bit and turned back and forth in front of the mirror at the way it hugged her form. Or didn’t, she considered as the shirt drooped in the front. Huh.

_Needs some boobs_, she thought, and her gem glowed briefly as the shirt filled.

She leaned forward, admiring her new cleavage, and grabbed a black tube off the vanity top. She uncapped it and looked inside, then figured out the twisting base and rolled it up. A lipstick. She pouted as she brought it slowly up to her lips and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

Vidalia was always saying these were “made out of whales”, but this didn’t taste like any whale _Amethyst_ had ever eaten. It was nice though. Oily and thick, like foie gras made out of motor oil.

“Hey VIDALIA, you _HUNGRY_?!?” She bellowed suddenly, flecking the mirror with tiny bits and chewed dark-red chunks.

“Who are you calling a HUSSY?!?” Vidalia screamed in reply, almost drowned out by the sound of water spraying and echoing in the adjacent bathroom. Pleasantly earthy-smelling steam had been billowing out for quite some time, lending the bedroom an air of mystery like a music video.

Amethyst grinned madly, teeth speckled with red blobs like blood. It was a good look for her.

“You want me to ORDER a PIZZA??” she yelled, even louder this time.

“I told you, I’m not into WATERSPORTS,” came the bellowed response. Amethyst rolled her eyes as the water shut off and silence fell, broken only by a dog barking madly down the street.

Vidalia exited the bathroom through a curtain of steam. The oversized towel wrapped around her lean form turned her body into a featureless cylinder. She ambled over and stood behind Amethyst, leaned over her to grab a hairbrush off the vanity top. She stared at nothing in particular in the mirror for a long moment; Amethyst was used to that kind of thing by now. Sometimes Vidalia got still like this, seemed like she would just… turn off. Like her batteries ran out or something. It usually didn't go on for more than a minute or two, and this time was no exception.

Then she lifted her arms to start working it through the hair water had turned dirty-blonde and stringy.

“Nice tits,” she muttered at Amethyst’s low neckline, then swore softly as the brush caught in a tangle at the back of her head. Her slightly frizzled armpit hair reminded Amethyst of something deep-fried, and she drew in a breath to suggest dinner again.

Vidalia cut her off with, “Go ahead and get a pizza if it’ll stop you from eating all the damn lipstick,” and smirked at Amethyst in the mirror. It almost reached her eyes. The smirk dropped off her face as she added, “_I’m_ not calling, though.”

Amethyst rolled her eyes again and grabbed the phone off its cradle, dialing one of only two phone numbers she had memorized.

She listened to it ringing as Vidalia cussed and yanked at her hair, before finally giving up and just throwing the hairbrush across the room to land in a drift of smashed, empty cigarette packs leaking tobacco flakes everywhere up against the far wall. Amethyst knew as long as she kept letting it ring, someone would finally come out of the back to answer it.

Someone at the pizza shop finally answered as Vidalia shimmied awkwardly across the massive four-poster bed, still towel-clad, and laid on her stomach as she stretched over to rummage in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

“SandcastlePizzaWe’rethePizzaForYourParty. S’thisForPickuporDelivery” droned the person on the other end of the line, as Amethyst watched clouds of smoke begin to puff up from the other side of the bed.

“276 Seagrass, YOU know the drill, buddy!,” Amethyst barked, then added, “two extra large, extra cheese, extra nails,” before smashing the receiver back down on the yelp of “N-nails?” She turned to look over her shoulder to watch Vidalia’s upper half slither off the bed and out of sight. Amethyst ate a second lipstick listening to Vidalia’s lighter spark, a slow coil of smoke lifting above the far side of the massive four-poster bed. Her bottom half slid off too, then she did some kind of somersault and stood up.

Vidalia was sucking on a pipe as she sauntered over, towel still somehow miraculously in place.

“Ugh. It’s too _quiet_ in here,” Vidalia muttered, then started messing with the stack of music players and speakers that stood like a matte black column next to the vanity. Thrumming bass guitar and drums began to pour out of the speakers. When the neighbor’s dog, which had finally started to calm down, began barking again, Vidalia just turned it up til they couldn’t hear it anymore.

“That shirt looks good on you,” she coughed, “you should keep it.”

Vidalia set her pipe down with a clack and grabbed up several pairs of dangly earrings, still attached to their cardboard placards. She yanked them out and pushed the hooks of the longest and dangliest pair through the tiny holes in her earlobes, then dropped the rest carelessly on the floor to step on and cuss about later. She picked up the pipe and tried to pull at it before she realized it had gone out and setting it back down again.

Amethyst smiled and snatched up the lighter from where Vidalia had dropped it, and used it to light the packed material in the pipe, taking a long draw before handing it back to her. Vidalia started to sway to the music and tossed her head to watch the earrings catch the light. She blew out several fat smoke rings and Vidalia punched through them with her free hand as if they were targets.

“Does… does this shit even work on you?” she giggled, adding in a deep, put-on voice, “Is this...your brain...on druuuugs?” She blinked a few times, and leaned forward, squinting at Amethyst’s reflection over her shoulder. “Do you like… even_ have_ a brain?”

Amethyst reached behind her and firmly took the pipe away.

“You’re the brainless one, ya baked potato,” she growled, then grinned as the song changed to one she recognized.

“Extra chiiiiives,” Vidalia muttered absently, leaning in again to watch her earrings dangle. They were a series of flat, circular silver disks, with some kind of fine chain connecting them, punched through and weaving between, and continuing down from the bottom until each terminated in a white, teardrop-shaped bead.

“I can’t believe how fucking ugly these things are,” she whispered, fascinated.

Then she squinted, snorted, and her reddened eyes half-filled with tears. She yanked the little hooks out and took an earring between each thumb and forefinger, slowly bringing them down.

“What if….” she snorted again, then continued in a choked voice, “what if _these were nipple rings_???”

She dangled each in front of her towel-wrapped chest, laughing hysterically and trying to make them swing in a circle to the music. Amethyst laughed until tears came to her eyes as well, then suddenly leaned back in her chair and snatched the earrings away from Vidalia.

“Nooooo, my nips!!” she croaked, collapsing to her knees behind the short vanity stool and wrapping her arms around Amethyst. Vidalia did her ‘dead weight’ trick; Amethyst gamely allowed herself to be hauled off the stool and onto the floor, where they scuffled around on their knees.

The towel finally yanked off Vidalia as she knelt on it and moved back, falling to the floor in a damp pile as she play-wrestled in a mock attempt to retrieve the jewelry. Amethyst shoved the earrings down the front of her shirt, and Vidalia stopped wrestling and instead put her hands on Amethyst’s shoulders as the purple gem on her chest glowed.

“Da da daaaa DA!!!” she crowed, and pulled the neckline of the shirt down to reveal two excessively large breasts, this time with nipples, each dark purple nub sporting a long, dangling, hideous earring. Vidalia drew back in awe, let Amethyst return to the seat in front of the vanity to admire her handiwork.

“Whoaaa.” Vidalia goggled at them, leaning further over Amethyst’s shoulder to peer at their reflections, and slowly slid her hands down to cup the breasts and then lightly tug on the dangling discs.

“They’re really attached,” she snickered in amazement as Amethyst grinned proudly, and the music swelled.

Her eyes hooded as she began nibbling on Amethyst’s ear, but didn’t take her eyes off the mirror.

“I’ve gotta paint this,” she muttered, gently bobbling purple boobs to make the light catch on their adornment.

“What, right now?” Amethyst chuckled.

Vidalia tried to kneel on the vanity seat to press up against Amethyst’s back, but lost her balance and almost fell instead. Amethyst hopped down from the stool, scooped her up and launched her onto the bed. Vidalia’s squeal seemed a bit belated but Amethyst whooped in reply anyhow and leaped up to join her.

Amethyst hummed along to the music and took Vidalia in her arms, and lost track of how long they spent kissing, cuddling, caressing. It was like that sometimes, especially when Vidalia smoked whatever was in the pipe. She still smelled like it, that and the bottle Amethyst had given her to shower with, and the mulchy-sweet scent of cigarettes that never completely went away, even when she bathed. Sometime they’d go on exactly like that for hours. Sometimes Vidalia went to sleep and Amethyst just cuddled her. Other times Vidalia’s touch grew frantic, her mouth hungry for more than kisses, her body demanding and restless or sweet and pliant and wanting.

Most of the humans she’d spent time with liked to do this with her, and Amethyst loved to watch Vidalia’s face being lit by the intermittent glow of her gem as she became heavier, lighter, taller and shorter, flowing with and against Vidalia’s body to become everything she ever wanted. The dangly earrings clacked hard against Vidalia’s teeth once, and Amethyst shifted to free them, tossed them against the wall. Vidalia made a fake-spitting noise of derision, and they laughed together for a few minutes before returning to their sweaty grappling on the mattress.

Maybe Amethyst didn’t literally have a brain made out of meat or whatever. But gems could only process sensory information if they had a form, and that was a network that Amethyst could adjust as she saw fit. Maybe her whole body was her brain. Amethyst knew she was better at this than most gems; she had a natural, intuitive knack for adjusting not only her appearance, but the internal pathways that processed pain and pleasure, sight and taste. All that good stuff.

Although they’d been doing this a while, Amethyst only felt what she wanted to feel. And what she wanted was for Vidalia to like her, and to like what they were doing, and well…making sure took a little concentration. Most of the adjustments she made didn’t have a lot to do with feeling pleasure, but a lot to do with causing it.

Vidalia was moaning into Amethyst’s very busy shoulder when she suddenly interrupted herself. “Hey, is that the doorbell?”

“They’ll just leave it there for us,” Amethyst panted, “they’ve done it before.”

Vidalia scowled and reiterated, “I still have to pay for it, even if the raccoons get it, you know.”

“Then I’ll just have to go eat the raccoons,” she grunted smugly, and Vidalia grew distracted as Amethyst’s gem glowed again.

Eventually, Vidalia shut her shaky legs and dolphined away from Amethyst, yelping “Sensitive! Sensitive!” and Amethyst rolled over onto her belly and just…rested, for a while. That was a lot of shifting in a (relatively) short amount of time, even for her. Vidalia mumbled, “If I can ever move again, you wanna share your raccoon with me?” Amethyst just giggled weakly in reply.

After a little while, Vidalia glanced over at her and added tentatively, “Does all that…make you tired?”

“No way,” she replied, trying to look more energetic. “I could go again right now. Twice!”

“Okay,” Vidalia frowned, “But like. Don’t you ever... Don’t you want me to do stuff to you instead?”

Amethyst sat up, facing the wall. She stayed like that long enough to make it awkward, then sighed and punched the mattress lightly.

“Am I not doing it good enough?”

“What?” Vidalia squawked. “That’s _not_ what I said.”

“Maybe it’s what you _meant_,” she snapped back.

Vidalia scooted herself across the bed a little so she could stretch her arm and touch Amethyst’s back.

“That _isn’t_ what I meant. I just…. If you’re with someone… people do stuff to each other, it’s not just one person….” she trailed off. “You like doing it to me, right? I just wanna do stuff to someone, too.”

Amethyst wiped her hands over her face tiredly, trying to think about things Vidalia had done before, said before. What did she want? Okay.

She stood up and shifted, then turned around to pose with her forearm leaned up against the bedpost.

“Hey, Vidalia. You wanna _do_ stuff to me, right?”

Vidalia’s mouth fell open as her eyes traveled up, then her face crumpled in derision.

“You think I wanna fuck _Greg_??”

“Wh-is that not what you…you said he was _hot_!”

Vidalia groaned and covered her eyes. “That is _not_ the same thing.”

Amethyst felt even more confused, and was getting pretty flustered.

“B-but. I mean, I can do anyone you want! Celebrities or whatever!” She pointed to the towering sound system with Greg’s hand. “That girl from this band, what’s she look like!?”

“Uh…she’s _dead_, Amethyst,” Vidalia growled. “What are you even talking about? Why do think I want to get with dead chicks and strangers and other people’s boyfriends? Do you think I’m some sort of weird perv?”

Amethyst was starting feel angry, but she really wanted to get it right…or prove Vidalia wrong, or something. She tried to think of someone Vidalia knew, and wanted to-oh. Hey, what about someone she already had done stuff with? Amethyst shifted a final time, and put her hands on her hips with a triumphant smile.

Vidalia’s face got dangerously still, and her grip in the pillow got white-knuckled. Then her chin shook, and she flung the pillow directly into Amethyst’s face, hard.

“What _THE FUCK_, AMETHYST?” she screamed.

Another pillow followed the first, but Amethyst managed to duck this time.

“Marty? MARTY?!”

Vidalia ran out of pillows. She grabbed one of the bottles of the expensive stolen perfume still scattered all over the bed and hucked it. Maybe not directly at Amethyst, but definitely at the wall behind her. It didn’t even shatter; the top broke off and started flooding the carpet with a rank odor that managed to be chemical and animal at the same time.

“Wh-whatever!” Amethyst shouted, still wearing Marty’s face. “You’re being _crazy_, and it _stinks in here!_” She turned around and walked out the door, slamming it shut behind her even though it hadn’t been closed to begin with.

_Classic Marty_, Vidalia thought dully as she tried to slow her breathing down, because it really did stink. Come to think of it, that had been the last thing _he’d_ said to her, too.

They were both right, though. Her house stank, and so did she. The whole thing stank. _Everything_ stank. As a matter of fact, she didn’t think she could stay here even one more second.

Vidalia got out of bed still naked, rummaging in her tiny vanity drawer for a scrap of paper tucked under a hand mirror. She dialed the number on it, listened just long enough for someone to answer. Instead of replying she just hung up and started getting dressed. She didn’t bother taking another shower. Seemed like way too much work.

She shut the bedroom door behind her, went down the stairs, out the front door. She stepped over a crime scene without a pause; two extra large, extra cheese victims had been kicked to death and mauled by raccoons, not necessarily in that order. She got in her Honda and didn’t stop driving til she got to the shitty motel room in Empire City.

///

He had the audacity to look happy to see her, so she spent the next three months letting him spend her money, wreck her car to the tune of more than she wanted to pay (but pay she did), complain about her housekeeping skills or lack thereof, and fill her ears with self-aggrandizing bullshit about the “next big thing.”

Three months’ worth of mileage on one smile.

Vidalia thought that really said a lot about her and her priorities, when she bothered to think about anything at all.

She came back to the room one morning early after a concert and an afterparty and an after-afterparty. Some older punk rock chick was making fried eggs on a hotplate wearing Marty’s boxer briefs and nothing else. He wasn’t even there, and all she felt was relief. They shared the eggs. Vidalia let her read their horoscopes out loud, and then she packed up her shit.

She was on her way back to Beach City in two hours.

When she opened the door to the house, she actually felt happy to be home for the first time…in a really long time. She scratched at a big zit on her chin, then looked down and saw one of the framed photos of her and her folks that had been just sitting on the next-to-last stair for who knows how long. She picked it up, then started taking the rest of them down off the walls. She set them carefully on a side table near the kitchen before heading up the stairs. _I'll get a scrapbook or something_, she thought.

When she opened the bedroom door the smell hit her like a wall, and she leaned over and puked up all the punk rock eggs right there on the floor.

Vidalia wiped her mouth, panting. _What the hell_, she thought, _it isn’t even that bad. After it’s all dried up, it actually smells almost good, why did I-_

Several key bits of information coagulated in her brain at the same time.

“Shit,” she whispered. “_Fuck._”

She grabbed a towel off the floor and used it to to gather up the vomit, then realized she didn’t really want to wash a towel with vomit in it along with the rest of her clothes.

She took it downstairs still wadded up and looked in the kitchen, but the trash was full. So was the sink, and the downstairs toilet had been full of standing water and her homework from like four years ago for what she was suddenly realizing had to have been six months.

She almost cried.

How had she let everything get so bad?

Then Vidalia realized she actually _was_ crying. For the first time in...years, maybe. Possibly since that homework was assigned, before literally everything has started to feel like too much work. After all, she hadn’t had anyone to tell her to do it. Or to keep going to school, since she'd been old enough to just drop out.

No one to tell her she couldn’t do whatever she wanted. How ironic that it turned out there had been no point, since she didn’t actually want anything anymore.

Except…well. Now she realized she kind of did. Does. Want something.

She wants to clean up this shithole.

Vidalia flared her nostrils and took a few deep breaths. Once she calmed down, she went in and looked under the kitchen sink to see if—there. There was only one trash bag left.

But maybe one was enough. Just enough to take the first step _towards_ something, instead of getting in her car again and driving away from everything forever.

She put the towel in it, tied it off so it wouldn’t smell or whatever. She grabbed her keys and went out the door.

///

Amethyst had spent the last 20 minutes or so in the grocery aisle of the midsize drugstore carefully excising and eating plastic-wrapped Twinkies out of the boxes before closing the flaps and carefully putting them back. The next time she turned her head to look out for humans, she saw Vidalia standing there staring at her.

She looked like shit.

“Hey,” Amethyst said around a mouthful of plastic and frosting, nonplussed. “Do you like… need help or something?”

Vidalia came over to her.

“I can’t find the trash bags,” she said.

“Bags made of trash?” Amethyst asked. “Or...you put the trash _in_ the bag? Why do you need that?”

“I think I’m pregnant,” Vidalia replied.

“Oh,” Amethyst blinked. “That’s when you can make another little human and then it comes out of you later?”

Vidalia laughed weakly.

“Yeah, that’s… basically it.”

Amethyst thought about it for a second. “Um, did you want it to happen, or want it to stop happening?”

Vidalia put her hand on her belly and looked down, then looked at Amethyst in the face.

“I think…I think I _want_ it to happen. Me and my baby… that’s a _family_, right? But, my house.” She laughed sadly. “I can’t put a baby in there. I’ve gotta fix it up, you know? Make it nice.”

Amethyst was still frowning at Vidalia’s stomach. “Is it going to come out now?”

“Uh, what?”

“When does it come out? The little human. Baby.”

“Oh, jeez,” Vidalia frowned. “Months and months, but….I can’t be sure.” She made a determined face. “I gotta get this thing, it’s a stick you pee on to tell you if the baby’s there, and then you can go to the doctor and find out how long it’ll be til it comes out.”

“That’s gotta be in the top ten weirdest things anyone has ever said to me,” Amethyst replied. Then she grinned. “Wait, can I pee on the stick, too!?”

Vidalia snorted, rubbed her eyes with her fists, looked at Amethyst, and just cracked up.

“Oh, man,” she sighed finally. She took Amethyst by the hand, who had looked concerned but by this point was smiling again, if hesitantly.

“We’ll get you your own stick.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written back at the beginning of 2016 or so. I thought it was worth polishing up and setting free into the wild once more, because I've got a lot of Amedalia feels and can't believe it's not a more popular ship.


End file.
